EFL STUDENTS

EFL Students

EFL Students

Introduction

It is commonly accepted that schools, especially universities where the learner has to play a more active role taking responsibility for his own learning, must prepare independent, responsible citizens. The traditional aim of education, mere transmission of knowledge, is not adequate in the new millennium with its rapidly changing social and economic conditions. Schools are no longer able to predict and then equip learners with the skills they will need throughout the rest of their professional lives. Instead, they need to provide students with a large repertoire of strategies to enable them know what to use when and for what learning task. What they need to do is acquisition and use of the most important of skills; learning how to learn skills.

In recent years, there has been a shift in focus from the teacher to the leamer, from a focus on the improvement of teaching to a growing concern for how learners learn a second or foreign language. Chamot et al (1999, p. 175) reported that another critical shift was from teaching strategies as a separate entity to integrating strategies into the language curriculum. Teachers also struggled with determining an appropriate scope and sequence of strategies to teach at various levels.

This shift in focus is accompanied with a shift in both teacher and learner roles. Oxford (1990, p.10) emphasizes that teachers traditionally expect to be viewed as authority figures, identified with roles like parent, instructor, director, manager, judge, leader, evaluator, controller, and even doctor who must cure the ignorance of the students. New functions are facilitator, helper, guide, consultant, advisor, coordinator, idea person, diagnostician of students' problems, and communicator. New teaching capacities also include identifying students learning strategies, conducting training III learning strategies and helping learners become more independent.

Students should not only know what the metacognitive strategies are, but should use them as well. In spite of the importance attached to metacognitive language learning strategies in enhancing language proficiency, no systematic instruction in these strategies is provided. Such conclusions led the researcher to think of training EFL students at the faculty of education in some metacognitive language learning strategies to measure the effect of this training on developing students' listening comprehension and reading comprehension as well as their language proficiency.

Context of the problem

Although reading and listening are two essential language skills that college students need in studying for courses, performance on examinations, and in developing general language proficiency, it was observed by the researcher, while attending the essay and linguistic exercises course taught to first year EFL students at the faculty of Education, the lack of explicit direct instruction of reading and listening comprehension. Systematic reading or listening instruction has no place in EFL preservice teacher education programs. Traditionally, however, some reading practice is usually given as part of the essay and linguistic exercises course. In these classes, there is much reading in the form of student answering of questions on reading passages without tangible assistance from the instructor ...